


Split Second

by turntechnologic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Guilt, Sexual Harassment, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Shenanigans, Underage Smoking, implied minor character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2234619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turntechnologic/pseuds/turntechnologic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because every pairing needs a dumb as shit superhero au.</p><p>Special thanks to my lovely dp anon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t really have any business posting this now but I mean why the heck not, yknow? Anyway, this is one confusing fic and fingers crossed I actually feel up to continuing it. Schools starts in like two days and I’ve got a lot on my plate, but I have done a lot of planning for this (which is something that never happens) and I’m feelin real good about this au. Hopefully having this out there will push me to work on it more. Anyway, I hope you guys like it.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who offered to beta read, and special thanks to my lovely dp anon!!

The cigarette smoke curls out in the air before you like a white snake. It might even look like one if the edges weren’t so blurred, but unfortunately smoke can’t really hold any one particular shape. Still, it’s nice to imagine. 

It’s also nice to imagine it doesn’t feel like one hundred fucking degrees fahrenheit, even at two forty five in the damn morning. It’s dark enough to seem like the sun had sunk a whole day ago, but you’re finally beginning to realize how every spark of light that hits the crumbled pavement beneath your feet during the day is retained like the concrete is the stingiest of children holding onto a jar of candy, except instead of throwing a tantrum and wailing until it gets to keep it’s spoils, the pavement has a change in heart and just radiates all the warmth it’s collected up into the atmosphere, or, more specifically, right to where you're standing. You’re sweating bullets, you’re sweating balls, you’re sweating your ass off, and honestly you’re just about ready to pack up and walk yourself back to New York.

Yeah, you’ve lived up north your entire life- so what? Texas was going to be a big adjustment for you. 

A small voice in the back of your mind reminds you that actually, it’s your fault that you have to get used to it. You squish it like you're stepping on the weed the pavement was spitting up under your sneaker, upper lip curling as you pluck the cigarette from your mouth expertly and drop it to the concrete to be the next in line for the swift justice your foot would serve. 

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are seventeen years old. You’ve been seventeen for about a month, though, and it was just a week ago that you thought you were going to be okay. Now, you were hardly as confidant. 

A new state, a new school, a new foster family, a new secret. That was a lot to ask of one kid. You couldn’t say anything, though, because the alternative was worse and you knew it. But at least you now had this aura of mystery clinging to your person like the ever present burn of tobacco. It made you feel tougher, made you feel smarter, faster, more dangerous. And hey, it’d be nice when break was over and you could enter your new school with exactly the kind of edge all the girls were looking for. 

Though, of course, you could be wrong. But, honestly, who the fuck could say they had time traveling powers?

Your phone buzzes lightly in your back pocket, and you slide it out of it’s fabric prison to cut the power and shove it back. You are in no mood to be interrupted, and if this new family was going to worry their asses off over your health and wellbeing then honestly they were on an express train for an early grave. You knew what stress did to a person. You watched it happen right in front of your eyes. 

It was funny. All those months ago left you were wishing you could just turn back the clocks. Now there isn’t anything to stop you, except yourself. 

You could go back and fix it. Make sure there’s a fresh box of condoms in the room. He wouldn’t have left if you didn’t arrive, and she’d be happy. 

You know why you can’t go back. It’s in the tremble of your fingers when you pull the pack of cigarettes you swiped from the kitchen counter on your way out the door, the lighter only an afterthought. As much as you detest the thought of her not having a life while you do, you can’t bring yourself to change it. She wouldn’t want that, and you know it. 

The curb looks inviting in it’s solid position by the street. There are a couple crushed cans and shattered bottles but you’re careful when you sit, feet out stretched in front of you as you take a drag and look up at the towering buildings. Houston isn’t nearly as big as New York, and you can actually see a couple stars if you squint. It makes you feel more alone than anything so you bring your gaze back down to the earth and glance about wearily. You haven’t had a bedtime in years, but these last few days have been dragging you down more than you’d like to admit. 

Out the corner of your eye you spot a stray cat ducking out from an alleyway. It’s light fur helps it stand out some in the poorly lit street and you stay still as it crouches down by a telephone pole and drops something from it’s mouth. You can barely make out what it has, but the second you recognize large ears and a tail you snap your head forward and swallow hard. 

You think back to your collection. Dozens of jars lined up with small skeletal bodies laying perfectly preserved, lined up and sorted to your fancy. When you were young you thought they were the coolest shit, but ever since she died you couldn’t really stomach the sight. Now even a little mouse was enough to bring a tight feeling to your chest, and you seal your lips around the cigarette and close your eyes. 

Taking a deep breath and calming your body you focus hard on what it would be like in the future. Not a hundred years for now, or even ten. Just five minutes will do. The oppressive air around you brushes against your skin like a song and you have a vague sense of time clicking forward at an increasing speed. You feel every nanosecond as it brushes past your cheek, just like you can feel the minutes, and maybe some day you’ll give those hours and days a try. You have to practice, going forwards and back, but for now it seems that a handful of minutes might still prove a challenge. 

Even with such a relatively small segment it’s hard to stop, and it leaves you slamming at the breaks- there’s a cold terror in your chest that reminds you to grab at the desired point in time and not let yourself get lost. It would be so easy to let decades slip around you, and you have a very real fear of getting stuck.

When you open your eyes it’s to realize you have to start carrying a watch. The only indication that anything had happened at all was the smoldering butt of the cigarette still in your fingers, wasted in your haste to leave what only a moment ago to you was the present, and you curl your lips up some and drop it to the ground. Guess you can’t travel with those lit- or maybe you could use them as timers to help you judge. Still, it seemed like a waste. You stand up and shake off your clothes, intent on returning home as you pass in front of the small pile of bones and splashes of blood on the sidewalk. The cat is nowhere to be found, as is the majority of the mouse. At least you were spared the sound. 

You look down at the little carcass as you pass it by and count all the different meanings the phrase “killing time” could possibly have.


	2. Time Flies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this part ages ago, hopefully I can revive this soon and actually turn this into the BroDave fic it's supposed to be :']

Sometime within the next ten minutes of your walk the streets around you start to look familiar, and that thought is strange. This isn’t the same city you were born in sixteen years ago, the one you hadn’t left until last month. You don’t know it like the back of your hand. And, frankly, you have no time to learn. 

Hopefully everything goes as planned, because next week you’ll be making your way back to New York to find your brother. 

Your mother didn’t like to talk about him. She’d shut down, maybe even snap at you. But you knew what she really wanted to say- it was plain as day when she would sit down on the couch after a long night at work and bring her legs up to press her face into her knees. 

She missed him like crazy, and eventually it began to show. You watched it weigh down on her, worse than time could, worse than your father’s desertion did. It was just you and her against the world and she just couldn’t take that after once knowing the love of a husband and another son. 

She left you an old, faded photograph. It was taken a good twenty years ago- your brother would have been about 15 at the time. Sometimes your eyes would trace across his face, so very similar to your own, same nose, same jaw- and you’d wonder if he knew he’d be leaving two years from then. Two years and your mother would lose her mind over him, and your father’s patience would grow thinner and thinner. Did he ever think of returning? Does he even know about you? 

A street light blows out while you’re passing underneath. It’s still a thousand fucking degrees outside, but something about the sudden darkness dropping over you manages to chill your blood like the temperature had plummeted as well. You shake it off easily enough and pick your way down the sidewalk slowly, listening carefully in your anxious state. Maybe sneaking out at such an early hour in an unfamiliar city wasn’t the best idea, but it wasn’t like you’ve never gotten in a fight before. You could take care of yourself. 

Almost as if some great deity had planned it, you heard a rowdy laugh ahead of you. The next streetlamp was at the end of the block, and judging by the way the raucous voices were bouncing off the walls of the buildings around you, they were about ready to round the corner and greet you head on. 

Looking side to side carefully, you jam your hands in your pockets and cross the street, hoping to create as wide a gap as you could make between yourself and the gang of very obviously drunken men.

They careen around the corner with just as much grace as you expected they would, crashing around on the hoods of the cars and against the railings leading up to locked front doors. The streetlamp is the only source of light on the block- of course you had to pick the dark road to walk down, the one where every resident dutifully turned off their lights before turning in for the night. Jesus, would it kill some of these people to leave a damn lamp on in the window? People were trying to get home here. 

“Hey kid!” Comes the anticipated shout, and you feel yourself grinding to a tired halt as you turn to look their way, hoping to give them as little a reason to follow you as possible. “What are you doing out, doesn’t your mommy know you’re out this late at night?” 

You bristle, albeit unintentionally, shoulders stiffening and tightening as you shrug some. The bitter stench of alcohol drifts over to you and you can’t help but wrinkle your nose, happy for the darkness at the moment as you try to think through their motives. 

You know for a fact it doesn’t look like you’re carrying any cash. Your father left when you were ten and your mother died six years later- there wasn’t any money to be had. You had on the same record print shirt that you got when you were thirteen. It was far too large back then, hanging well past your knees, though now it fits perfectly, almost like your body was pre-programmed to fit into it.

“Hey, why don’t you let me walk you home, kid? Any girl that can pass on genes like that sounds like somebody I’d like to meet.” 

Just the thought turns the contents of your stomach to bile. The taste of cigarette smoke is sharp on your tongue and you swallow hard, trying desperately to keep it all down as you curl your upper lip and take a step back towards the end of the street. 

“Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t think that’s happening tonight. Actually, I’m not sorry at all. She didn’t like it when the cat brought home trash off the street, so I doubt she’d like it if I tried either.”

The minute those words slide off your tongue you’re already trying to backpedal to the end of the street, almost to the point of slapping your hand over your mouth already because come on, Dave, that was probably the dumbest thing you could have said. 

It isn’t a surprise when the crowd bursts into a fit of outraged shouts and gleeful laughs. The man who addressed you is standing stock still at the front of the group, which is a miracle considering how completely inebriated they all appear to be. 

“You wanna repeat yourself, punk?” He asks, tripping over his words and- not surprisingly- feet alike. “Because I’d be happy to settle for you in her place. Might teach you some manners, especially a few things about respecting your elders.”

There’s a cold breeze slowly freezing your back as you approach the corner. Adrenaline is shaking your fingers and every thought other than run! has fled your brain, and you’re kicking into that timeless fight-or-flight mode that natural selection had ingrained into your mind deeper than your own fucking name. The crowd is in pursuit, lumbering after you as you’re struck with the image of a herd of buffalo being chased down by an Indian. The hunter has become the hunted and hopefully your feet are faster, hopefully your corners are sharper, hopefully you can buy yourself some time!

The word sets off an alarm in your head, and the minute the men break into a dead sprint in your direction you are grasping at the milliseconds of time as they brush by your cheek. Their feet pound across the asphalt as your heart pounds against your ribs. You dig your fingers into your palms like you’re trying to hold onto every moment, like you’re falling from the edge of a cliff and they’re the rope by your hand- you grind it to a halt and squeeze your eyes shut as hands reach out and brush against your skin, and it’s only a quick breath before you can feel everything freeze around you and an even quicker blink of the eye before it’s reversing. 

When you next open your eyes you’re standing at the corner of a street, and the light above your head blows out. The distant sound of a crowd of drunken men echoes down to you from the other end. 

Quelling the nausea threatening to empty your stomach, you turn on your heel and take a different rout.


End file.
